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Category Archives: Music @ja

Funny Little Words: Annie The Clumsy

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A little over halfway through Annie The Clumsy’s Vol. 1 collection, the singer plays a lovely little number about being with a lover, a lover who just overwhelms our protagonist with presumed swagger. Then, the proverbial shank to our thighs – “everything you do/makes my uterus ache/not my heart but my uterus ache.”

Everything about that explains the appeal of Annie The Clumsy, who first popped up on that latest Ano(t)raks comp, but also has a collection all her own. Part of it is her voice – the way she pronounces “uterus,” oh man. But the real intrigue here is how she subverts a sort of music that tends to get stupidly cheesy with sex. Her music is very bare bones, just her voice and (usually) ukulele, a combination that can get super cloying and cute in the wrong hands. Real talk, I’m writing this blurb in a Starbucks, and most of the songs playing here now highlight the lameness of the style, all cutesy-poo strumming mixed with Hallmark-grade sentiments. Annie The Clumsy, though, slyly focuses on sex, which makes for way more interesting stuff than typical love-letter material. “You Make My Uterus Ache” is pretty obvious, but following track “For God’s Sake” ups the stakes by being completely about how…uhhh…moist the central character gets thinking about a special someone (it plays like really awkward flirting, which maybe explains the “clumsy”). “Can I Sleep Over Tonight?” is pretty self-explanatory…but features banjo, which is a neat touch. Although not all the songs are about carnal pleasures – “Blemished Banana” may not actually be a double entendre, but rather about an actual blemished banana – the raunchier lyrics make these songs (which also sound really good) all the more interesting. Get it here, or listen below.

New Lullatone: Summer Songs

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When someone wonders “what the song of the summer” is going to be, what comes to mind? That’s usually code for wondering what’s going to be the most popular single of the season, what one will hear blaring from passing cars and at outdoor BBQs. It’s gonna be energetic and upbeat. And those are all fantastic qualities – summer is all about having a big ol’ good time, and it deserves a big ol’ killer song to go with.

Still, Nagoya duo Lullaton have probably gone and made the summer album of the year, if you consider putting the warmer months under a microscope worthy of that title. Summer Songs – see, look at the title! – does what every Lullatone album ever has done, which is zero in on small details of something and celebrate the simplest parts of life with cute, let’s-skip-down-the-road-together music. Song titles include “Hot Sand,” “Grocery Shopping For A BBQ,” “Secretly Loving The Smell Of Suntan Oil” and “Splitting A Banana Split” – all instances that wouldn’t define a summer, but still make up the fabric of those sweat-soaked days. Accordingly, Lullatone’s music here doesn’t try to be big, but rather simple and fun. Opener “Cannonball Splash” serves as bit of an about-face for the duo – it prominently features surf-rock guitar, and subsequently a fuzzier edge to a group that, as of late, has been playroom-clean. It’s great. Save for the hyper-cute “Splitting A Banana Split” – all doo-wop stylings about eating ice cream and sharing said treats, geez stupidly adorable – these tracks are instrument-focused memories. “Hot Sand” is a bunch of toy instruments lizard-skipping in a way that would make Shugo Tokumaru proud, while “Driving Home With A Towel On The Sweet” swelters. Oh heck, back to the cuddly stuff – the final track, “Still Feeling The Waves When You Go To Bed” features water sounds, birds and Yoshiko Tomida (Lullatone member Yoshimi Seymour’s mother) providing very faint singing. Lullatone are an outfit that long ago figured out what they were all about – capturing teeny tiny moments sonically – and Summer Songs is another strong collection of tunes from the two. It won’t be blasting out of stereos, but it’s as summery as it gets. Get it here or listen below.

New Seiho: “Evning (With Phoenix Troy)”

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Seiho has let people rap over his music before…but it would be best if we didn’t talk about the last time that happened (don’t call on cheeseball rappers). This, a song from the Osaka producer’s forthcoming album Abstraktsex, which takes an old Seiho instrumental (“Evening,” which is peak Seiho in all its nervous twitches and start-stop wonkiness) and lets singer Phoenix Troy go to work on it. And he sounds good! His smoother vocals match up with the velvet fidget of the music, and Troy himself exudes charm – Right Said Fred reference, nice, plus a sexiness that works alongside Seiho’s vibe. Hearing the music here sound good isn’t surprising – this track slapped a year ago, still slaps now – but hearing Seiho able to slide legit rapping into its frame is very cool. This album is going to be killer, huh?

Listen To Moscow Club’s Station M.C.C.B. Now

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It’s fun to theorize about how Moscow Club managed to raise more than $5000 on the website Indiegogo in order to press their first vinyl LP ever (full disclosure: I donated to the campaign, and also appeared in the promotional video for this project). It’s also pretty cool wondering what this all means, mannnnn, how this could impact the Tokyo indie-music scene and so forth. Thing is, as much as a blast it is to ponder about that stuff, I sorta think the answer to the first question is obvious. The bulk of songs appearing on crowd-funded LP, Station M.C.C.B., have been available for upwards of two years now and sounded great then too. The backhalf of this record, in particularly, plays like an aural photo album. I can still remember hearing the warm jangle of “Bikinikill” and asking Moscow Club if I could feature that song as Make Believe Melodie’s first contribution to the Music Alliance Pact. I remember every indie-loving DJ in Osaka finding a way to include “Pacific 724” into their sets, regardless of what else they played. I remember being absolutely floored by “Daisy Miller Pt. 2” to the point where I bought a collection of Henry James’ short stories. Even newer cuts like the Ray-Bradbury-honoring “Fahrenheit 451” and bright-eyed “Lizaveta” left deep impacts on first brush. Their are new songs here – the horn-powered “Choo Choo Train,” the ritzy funk of “Peoples Potential Unlimited” – and they are predictably very good. Of course this album is great – these songs have had time to groove and strum into our hearts, and now they are all available in one place.

The second question is much trickier to think about, but ultimately even that doesn’t matter. Up until now, Moscow Club have been a versatile outfit mostly releasing free EPs. They’ve played shows across Japan and have been doing all they can to primp up other independent acts in Japan. Station M.C.C.B. is documentation – both sonically and physically thanks to crowd funding – of how important this group has been for the Japanese independent scene over the last three years. It’s a well-deserved victory lap.

Listen to it here, or below.